On a sunny Saturday afternoon, league leaders Monmouth took on mid-table Blackwood Stars, who can be formidable opponents.

The game started with Monmouth intent on entertaining a large crowd including Monmouth's sponsors, all eager for a good game after last week's disappointing cancellation.

Adam Roberts, who had a fine game at full back, opened the scoring after four minutes with the first of his two well-taken tries.

The pressure on the Stars scrum was starting tell but the referee did not seem to want to deal with the opposition front row standing up but instead gave Stars the feed for turning through 90 degrees.

Even the home linesman Nick Atkinson was showing leniency towards the visitors, much to the annoyance of the home crowd. After 25 minutes Dewi Lane brilliantly held the ball up near the line to allow the supporting Monmouth players to join him.

The ball was recycled and scrum half Ludo Thomas put a deft chip over for Lane to touch down for the second try to make the score 10 points to nil with Rhys Ricketts failing to convert.

Next on the score sheet was Sam Harding. After a good line out take by Mike Griffiths, Mark 'Jock' Jones popped up in centre field and rolled back the years with a hip swivel and dummy which sent opposition the wrong way and popped a perfectly weighted pass to Sam, who scored under the posts. Ricketts added the conversion to take the score to 17-nil.

Another five minutes passed and another five points on the score board with Monmouth counter attacking from their own 22-yard line after a quickly-taken penalty by Ludo Thomas and good running from Andrew 'Spud' Davies, who drew the man and put Adam Roberts away to dive over for his second.

Blackwood Stars rallied and their flanker took advantage of a rare attack to dive over and they added the conversion to make the half time score 22 -seven.

For the full report on this story, see this week's Beacon (11th January)